How To Plant Hydrangeas

Planting a hydrangea is quite easy if you follow some simple steps. From how to dig the hole, place the plant and refill the soil, this video will show you how to ensure a healthy start for the shrubs in your garden.

Today, I am going to show you how to plant a hydrangea. The principles are going to be the same whatever shrub you are planting. Firstly, you need to dig your hole and that hole needs to be twice the width of the pot that your shrub is in.

So, get your spade down there into the soil. There are two trains of thought: you can either dig a round hole or a square hole. Some people believe that if you dig a square hole, the roots are going to get out easier than if you dig a round hole.

Because the shrub has already come out of a round pot, some people think the roots are just going to carry on growing around and around. Break up the soil as you dig it out, and just put it to one side. You also need to make sure that you have loosened up the soil at the bottom to allow the roots to spread out once the plant is planted.

Check the depth because what you want is for the soil level to be the same once the plant has been planted. I am going to take this cane and put it through just to measure the height of the soil compared to the soil in the pot. That looks absolutely fine.

What else you need is some nice organic matter, some well-rotted manure or some good garden compost, and you want to mix that in with the soil you have taken out of the hole. This will just enrich the soil. It will help with the drainage, and it will help the roots to spread out nicely.

It will enrich the soil and allow the roots to spread out into the hole that you have just dug. Now, making sure that the soil at the bottom of the hole is nice and loose, you want to take your shrub, put your hand over the pot at the top of the soil level and give the pot a squeeze. You don't want to damage the roots.

You can see, there is a nice root ball on there. The roots are quite tightly compact as it has been in its pot for a long time. Gently tease out the roots.

This will encourage them to spread out once you have put it in the hole. If you don't do this, sometimes there is a danger that it will just stay compact and the plant won't do so well. These are all the little feeding roots so these are going to be the ones that will take up the moisture and the goodness from the soil.

Pop your plant into its planting hole. Make sure it is in the right position, and then backfill with your enriched soil that you have dug out from the hole, firming it as you go because you don't want there to be any air pockets around the root ball of the plant. Make sure that you firm it in.

This is only a small shrub so I am just doing this with my hands, but if it is a bigger shrub, you can firm it down with your heel. I am going to put a nice top dressing of good compost around that, firming it in, again making sure that there are no air pockets. This is the same principle for any garden shrub that you are planting the same way.

They may have different specifications for the acidity in the soil, but basically, your planting method is still the same. You can see that the top of the plant is still at the same ground level that it was when it was in the pot. That is how to plant a hydrangea. .